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Autonomous Sourcing
Making AI Work for You: An Introduction to Agentic AI
Two days at Croke Park, where the world's leading procurement practitioners came to argue about the future of their profession, and to build the community that's shaping it.
Croke Park has hosted over a century of legendary sports, but this June, it served as the backdrop for a different kind of intensity. It's the third-largest stadium in Europe and the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, where Gaelic football and hurling have been played for more than 140 years. It’s a place built around community, competition, and showing up to win together. In June, it held something quieter but no less charged: a room full of the world's leading procurement practitioners, debating about where their profession goes next.
The distinct contrast between a historic stadium and forward-looking discussions gave Konnect 2026 a unique atmosphere. Choosing this location was completely intentional, as Ireland represents our home and the birthplace of Keelvar. Bringing the Konnect community back to Dublin was a natural choice. In his opening address, Alan Holland highlighted that gathering the global leaders of enterprise procurement in a single space serves as a powerful testament to the industry's direction.
Over two days we did the serious work, keynotes, product reveals, hard questions about ROI, and we did the other thing too, the thing that actually builds a community. Our emcee for the two days, John McCleverty, framed the structure simply: Day 1 was Inspire, a single stage with all of us in the same room building a common language. Day 2 was Enable, parallel tracks and hands-on workshops where each person could design their own day. In between there were stadium tours, pints of Guinness with faces and logos printed into the foam, live Irish music performed by two of Keelvar's very own engineers, dancing, and a custom GAA jersey for attendees to take home.
Key Themes and Highlights
The Philosophical Shift
Keelvar's Founder and CEO, Alan Holland, and Dr. Elouise Epstein of Kearney set the philosophical frame for the event. Alan introduced his concept of 'systems of intelligence'—a paradigm moving beyond point-in-time automation toward procurement ecosystems that continuously perceive, execute, and self-improve. He argued that agentic sourcing is the key to scaling excellence. Dr. Elouise Epstein challenged the audience, arguing that AI is exposing systemic cracks like fake productivity and tech debt. She advocated for moving past layering AI over old tools, urging the shift toward a truly 'AI Procurement OS' and emphasizing that the workforce of the future must focus on managing agents rather than just tasks. Watch the full keynote here.
Operationalizing Intelligence
The focus then moved to practical application. A standout moment was the fireside chat between Alan Holland and bp’s Nicholas Wright, who provided a candid look at how a global enterprise operationalizes AI-led transformation via their 'Digital Garage.' Watch the full conversation here.
This theme of pragmatic execution continued with Dave Devlin, Keelvar’s Chief Product Officer, who shared the shift in product philosophy toward outcomes over features, showcasing new agentic capabilities that learn and improve with each event. Finally, Natalia Figueira equipped practitioners with a vendor evaluation framework, teaching them to distinguish genuine Level 5 agentic capabilities from market noise to ensure their investments hold up under CFO scrutiny.
“A valuable opportunity to step back from the day-to-day and hear fresh perspectives on how technology, data and AI are shaping sourcing and supplier engagement.”
— Nathalia Bianchi, Head of Procurement Ireland
AI Agents in Sourcing: A Calibrated View
Day 2 opened on the main stage, before the tracks split, with a grounded look at AI agents in sourcing co-presented by Natalia Figueira and Shane O'Sullivan, complete with a live demo. Not the hype, but the practical reality of where the technology is today and where it's heading.
A key thread: disruption is no longer an exception, it's the operating environment. The biggest risk during disruption is a lack of market visibility. Agentic sourcing addresses this directly by enabling procurement teams to respond dynamically rather than reactively, perceiving when action is needed, adapting to novel situations, and handling the unexpected without requiring human intervention at every step. Supplier-side dynamics featured too: bidding agents are accelerating, and organizations that provide tooling for suppliers to automate bidding will have a structural advantage. Structured data flows are essential for precision and reliability, and that infrastructure needs to be built now.
Day 2: Enable, Designed by You
If Day 1 was about shared context, Day 2 was about depth. Parallel tracks ran throughout: a platform track for practitioners in the tool day to day, a leadership track on the operating models being built right now and how to scale AI across the enterprise, and partner sessions from ORO and Xeneta.
This year also marked a first for our Customer Advisory Board: a live, hands-on prototyping session. CAB members sat down with Keelvar engineers to build in real time, taking real challenges from the room and moving them from idea to working prototype in a single session, watching concepts take shape on screen as the conversation unfolded. The feedback was fantastic. There's something energising about collapsing the distance between a problem and a prototype, and about watching our engineers and our customers build something together. It's a format we're excited to carry forward.
“Thank you for all your efforts taking care of us. We felt very welcome, and a bit special.”
— Nancy Douma, NewPort Tank Containers
The afternoon turned hands-on with workshops, including the ever-popular Battle of the Bidders, Bid Automation, and a Product Drop-in Zone where attendees could bring real problems to the team.
The Uncapturable Moments
Here's what a recap can't quite capture.
The moment a room of senior procurement leaders went quiet walking out through the players' tunnel onto the edge of a pitch most Irish kids grow up dreaming about. The crowd gathered around the Guinness printer waiting to see their own faces settle into the foam. The trad musicians starting up, the dancers, the jerseys with everyone's names on them that turned a delegate list into a team sheet. As John McCleverty said in closing, what made this event is the people in the room: the conversations at the roundtables, the honest moments on the panels, the things said over dinner.
None of this is incidental to the point of Konnect. That is the point. That buzz Nick Wright described is the community: practitioners sharing what actually works, in a place that reminds you the work is done by people.
“A great success, and I received a lot of knowledge and ideas from the sessions and great networking. It's also inspiration for our own event.”
— Sylvain Fambon, CMO, BuyCo
Hear more from the people who were in the room.
The organizations leading in sourcing excellence today aren't waiting to see how AI plays out. They're building the capability now. And judging by the conversations at Croke Park, from the keynote stage to the last song of the night, they'd rather build it together.
Made Possible by Our Partners
Konnect is only as good as the community that surrounds it, and that includes the partners who helped bring it to life. Our sincere thanks to our sponsors:
Thank you for standing behind this community and for the conversations, demos, and connections you made possible across the two days.
Join Us for the Next One
Konnect 2026 was more than a conference. It was a gathering of practitioners actively shaping what modern procurement looks like, and a reminder that the organizations leading in sourcing excellence aren't waiting to see how AI plays out. They're building the capability now.
The conversation is continuing, and we’d love for you to be part of the next chapter. Join the waitlist for Konnect 2027 here.
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